I know there have been a lot of discussions on this list about how to
integrate ferrets together.  I have a situation that I would like people to
comment on - see if anyone else has experienced this.
 
Thor is a year old, late neuter, non-descented male.  He was allowed to go
into heat before he was neutered.  He lives with Odin, another male and they
get along fine, though when Odin tries to wrestle, Thor just goes limp or
runs away.  However, his behavior with female ferrets is entirely different.
 
Friends of ours have 4 females, and we do "ferret-sitting" swaps.  We've
found that Thor, after a short time together, will attack the females.  And
I mean attack - he bites the neck of the female (whoever he has chosen), she
will be screaming, and he literally scares the poop out of her.  Thor sprays
(every time), and we have to separate them.  He has drawn blood (we didn't
catch him fast enough).  They were together for a day, then a weekend, and
Thor had to be caged separately, and watched during play.  Then they were
together for a week (while we were on vacation) with the same results.  My
friend tried spraying him with water when he started attacking  - this
detered him briefly, but he always went back to the same behavior, and had
to do time outs in his cage.
 
My question is whether the fact that Thor is a late neuter has anything to
do with this, and whether or not he will ever get rid of this behavior with
a female ferret?  Odin gets along great with the females - he plays and
loves the company!  He's a MF ferret (early neuter/descent).  We'd like to
add to our ferret family, and I'd really like a girl. But now I'm really
nervous about Thor....does this behavior go away over time?  We weren't
really seeing any indication of that, but maybe a week+ is just not enough
time?  The time outs didn't seem to have much of an effect at all.
 
Has anyone seen similar behavior and either had it go away after longer
exposures or conversely, never go away?  I don't really want to subject a
new ferret to this, nor do I really want to have to deal with separate play
times if we get another ferret (or two :^) ).  Are there other ways to deal
with this?  We'll have the ferrets together again in October (this time at
our house), so if there are other things I can try, I'd love to hear
suggestions.  Could it just be that it's these particular 4 females?  (They
are all pretty different personalities - and he's managed to get to all 4!)
 
Thanks very much,
 
Amy
 
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Amy Goldman
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[Posted in FML issue 1667]